Trouble in the O.R.

Katie71275 · Oct 22, 2015

Learn from your mistakes. When I first started in labor and delivery, we were required to scrub. I contaminated the field at least twice. I promise you aren't the first and won't be the last!

Editorial Team / Admin · Oct 22, 2015

A few mistakes are not a reason to quit. Tip for the foley incident: many manufacturers print on the hub where you attach the syringe to deflate the balloon how large the balloon is. Check before pulling the cath out. Contaminating a sterile field? Those of us with years of experience do it occasionally too. Learn from these mistakes, improve upon them, and hang in there.

Windyhill, BSN · Oct 22, 2015

Thanks for that tip!

FurBabyMom, MSN, RN · Nov 3, 2015

A few mistakes are not a reason to quit. Tip for the foley incident: many manufacturers print on the hub where you attach the syringe to deflate the balloon how large the balloon is. Check before pulling the cath out. Contaminating a sterile field? Those of us with years of experience do it occasionally too. Learn from these mistakes, improve upon them, and hang in there.

This. Is true.

Also, it's FAR better to say something about when you have or think you have contaminated things than you patient get an infection that could have been 100% avoided. I've done it, (even with years doing this job) and I've been the person in the room that everyone hates because I found holes in wrappers.

Sometimes people in the OR have a fear of the new and unknown. You're new and therefore not known. They don't know what to expect from you or how to take you. Hopefully the surgeon is not always like that but reacted as such because you are new AND made a mistake.

Talk with your preceptor about how to handle those situations (if you haven't) and focus on continuing to grow. Those were other situations, on other days. Can't go back and change it, can only go forward and try not to do it again.

Nobody learns this specialty in a day, a week, a month or six months. It takes most people at least a year to feel comfortable. Longer if you're learning to scrub and circulate. Yes, a surgeon yelled at you. Might have been the first time, might not be the last (hopefully it is). They don't always remember where everyone starts out or how long it takes to learn (that surgeon survived residency which took them years and they may/may not have had fellowship too). We're all guilty of it sometimes, forgetting what it's like to be the new person.

Also, the "highs" and "lows" of days at work can seem more severe than in other fields or specialties in nursing. But the things we see and how directly our actions affect patients and their outcomes? Can magnify the good AND bad.

Celia214 · Nov 5, 2015

Two mistakes and you are going to quit!!! Dont do that, you are going to make several more, just take it as a learning experience and I promise you, you'll probably never make those same mistakes again. In the OR we all make mistakes, the important thing in the OR is being able to speak up and say when you do, so that it can be fixed. Be the person who does the right thing even when no one is looking.

If you have the feeling that says I love this job and I belong here, stick with it. It gets better ( may get worse first), but then better. WHen I was a new OR nurse I cried everyday for about 2 months, after I had finished orientation of 6 months. I thought about quitting. But a more experienced nurse told me, it was all apart of growing up in the OR. And my manager said, you'll start feeling OK after a year, but then at year 2 it will start making sense and then after that, its all you !!!!

So, stick with it, if you have that feeling!! Thats just my 2 cents!!!!

target98765 · Nov 8, 2015

OK, you are new, but sounds like you need a periop course! The hardest thing is to develop a "sterile concious." You need to know in your head what the invisible boarders are. Rule of thumb...don't touch anything BLUE!!!